Established in 1969, Manohar is a publishing house and a bookseller serving individuals and libraries. We export books by mail and have a bookstore at Ansari Road in Delhi.
Manohar initially sold only rare and out of print publications, but soon branched out into local sale/export of new books published in India, and then into publishing of scholarly works under its own imprint.

19 August, 2012

This book is a substantially modified and enlarged version of the author’s Ancient India: An Introductory Outline (Delhi, 1977) and surveys the major developments in India’s social,
economic and cultural history up to the end of the ancient period and the beginning of the early middle ages and explains the rise and growth of states with reference to their material basis. Special attention has been paid to the elements of change and continuity in society, economy and culture, and to the changing forms of exploitation and consequent social
tensions as well as to the role of religion and superstition in society. The book demolishes the popular historiographical stereotypes created by the Hindu-chauvinist communal writings. It also gives the lie to the view that the Indian society has been stagnant and changeless—a view which was propagated by Western scholars in the heyday of British imperialism and continues to be peddled ingeniously in our own times.

The assassination of Mahatma Gandhi . . . and the demolition of the Baburi Masjid are two . unforgettable milestones in the unfolding of the backward-looking Hindu revivalist and
fascist politics of contemporaneous India.

Since both Harappa and Mohenjodaro are situated now in Pakistan, the Hindu revivalists are busy locating the epicentre of the Harappan culture in the elusive Saraswati valley.

Dwijendra Narayan Jha graduated from Presidency College, Calcutta, in 1957 and obtained M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in 1959 and 1964 respectively from Patna University where he taught history up to 1975. He retired professor of history at the University of Delhi.

An Encounter of Peripheries: Santals, Missionaries, and Their Changing Worlds, 1867-1900

By- Marine Carrin and Harald Tambs-Lyche

This book partakes of the post-colonial reassessment of the nineteenth century, where agency is seen to lie, not just with the colonizing centre, but also with the colonized periphery. Here,
missionaries from a peripheral part of Europe—including a Norway striving to decolonize
itself—try to convert the Santals, an Indian tribe which had rebelled against the intruding colonial order. Provincializing the European origins of the missionaries, the authors try to explore the Santal response.

Missionary sources have been used to recast such encounters, but the response seldom has had a documented voice. The Santals, however, wrote thousands of pages as part of the missionary project to document their culture, showing their efforts to reconstruct and reappropriate their own culture. Subaltern voices emerge, as working-class missionaries and Santals meet, bypassing the centres of hegemony, and oppose the disenchantment of colonial experience
to the memory of a glorious past.

For some years, a space is created at the edge of empire, where the missionary adventurer, and Santals in search of a new identity, together build a new Christian community. The missionaries succeed only because of the Santal engagement—born, not just from their appropriation of missionary ideas, but also from their resistance to the Hindu majority and to internal colonialism. But soon colonial power relations erode missionary independence, as they come to depend on the churches of their homeland, while the Santals are absorbed into
the exploitative economics of colonialism. The space allowed by an ‘encounter of peripheries’ is closed.

Marine Carrin is Director of Research, CNRS at the LISST, Centre of Anthropology, Toulouse, France. She has worked for many years on the Santals and is currently working on the bhuta cults and other aspects of religion and society in South Canara, India.

Harald Tambs-Lyche is professor of social anthropology at the University of Picardie—Jules Verne, Amiens, France. He is currently working on a monograph on the Gauda Saraswat Brahmins of South Canara, India.

The 6/7th Rajputs were raised at Trichinopoly in 1941 as
a direct need for wartime expansion of the Indian Army. This memoir of the
6/7th’s North-West Frontier days in 1942 to its fight south through Burma
against the Japanese is a unique insight into the Rajputs’ fighting qualities
and attitude to life.

As the first wartime raised battalion in the Regiment it
had the good fortune to attract well trained Senior VCOs, NCOs and Officers
from the regular Rajput battalions, who all contributed to its development. It
joined in activities on the North-West Frontier serving at Quetta, Peshawar,
Darndil, Rasmak and on the Kojak Pass. Jungle training followed before joining 17
Indian Division at Ranchi then departing for Imphal and the final campaign in
Burma, including the pivotal battle of Meiktila and then to Rangoon and beyond.
The vital task was to ensure the successful containment of the 33rd Japanese
Army in Southern Burma. Indicative of the Battalion’s achievement and
demonstrating the high esteem in which it was held, was a remarkable letter
received from the Chief of Staff of the Japanese Army upon leaving Burma. There
can be few equivalent plaudits in the annals of warfare. On his return to the
UK in 1945 the author had the honour of presenting a Japanese sword to FM
Montgomery on behalf of all Officers, VCOs and men of the 6th Battalion.

Stuart Ottowell held a wartime ‘Emergency
Commission’ having passed out from Officer Training School (OTS) in 1942 at
Belgaum. He chose the 7th Rajput Regiment and an active service battalion.
After the War he sought a career in civilian life. He joined the Rajput Dinner
Club (UK) in 1948 and subsequently became its Honorary Secretary. F.M. Cariappa
attended the Club’s 50th Dinner in 1973 and in 1998 the final Dinner was held
under the author’s presidency. HRH the Duke of Edinburgh was the principal
guest. Present and future Colonels of the Regiment, Lieutenant General H.S.
Bagga VSM and Brigadier M.L. Naidu VSM attended. Since 1987 the author has been
a frequent guest at the Regimental Reunions, and the Meiktila Day celebrations
with the 6th Battalion.